The present invention relates to dynamic radon access memory (DRAM) modules, more particular, to a DRAM module with a solid state disk.
With the continuous development of solid state memory technology, flash memory devices such as flash memory cards and portable disks become widely used nonvolatile memory due to its excellent properties of high capacity, high access rate, low power consumption, miniaturization and high shock resistance. Especially, the capacity of flash memory comes into a unit of gigabytes in nowadays, it is believed that usage and development of flash memory can't be forecasted. For example, Microsoft has utilized flash memory to improve a response rate of its latest released operating system (OS) “Vista”. In a so-called “ReadyBoost” technology in “Vista”, a flash memory having USB interface is employed as an external memory device (EMD) to fetch up shortage of main system memory (generally DRAM). Furthermore, cache data can be stored in the flash memory such that a proportion of access operations of hard disk can be replaced by access operations of flash memory. Because an access rate of flash memory is higher than that of the hard disk, a performance of operating system is improved because an access rate of flash memory is higher than that of the hard disk. In addition, a so-called “ReadyDrive” hard disk, in which flash memory is used as a buffer for storing data when the operating system is in a sleep mode or shut up mode, also takes advantage of high access rate of flash memory to reduce a time period of waking up or starting up. Furthermore, the hard disk in the “ReadyDrive” hard disk can be shut up in a sleep mode; as a result, a power consumption of the “ReadyDrive” hard disk is thereby reduced, this is especially helpful to laptop computers that use battery as power supply.
It is to be understood that flash memory plays an important role in improving performance of a computer system according to above description. The flash memory may become a standard component of a computes system in future just like a DRAM module and a hard disk in nowadays. However, an additional flash memory driver having interface of USB is absolutely necessarily when a flash memory is communicating data with a computer, it is convenient to use such flash memory driver when the flash memory needs to be installed and uninstalled frequently, but when the flash memory become a standard component of a computers system the flash memory is rarely uninstalled. In such condition, the flash memory driver will cause an enclosure of a computer is lack of integrality. Furthermore, a transmission rate of USB interface is lower than that of SATA interface, but conventional flash memory disk can't use SATA interface to transmit data. It is believed a performance of Vista operation system will be improved if SATA interface can be applied in flash memory devices.